Category: World of Warcraft

I just figured out that these were once the regular dogs that were here.

My brother wanted me to move servers with him so he paid for my server transfers. Crazy huh?

I redid the bank alt about 4 times on the new server. I finally settled for the name Skullcoins (she’s a DK). Used the same white hair color, face, skin color or as close as I could remember. Originally I was leveling this Death Knight thinking Doubloon is still on Sargeras and I left her behind.

The Death Knight

Felt guilty about leaving her but it had to be done. When I finally got to Stormwind, I purchased x8 inexpensive Netherweave Bags and x4 Frostweave Bags. Purchased the bank slots and equipped the bags.

I purchased the guild charter and luckily got 4 guildless souls to sign my charter, one was Liddy. I named the new guild bank <The Nightmare Banker>. Then Purchased the first 3 guild bank slots. I’ll probably pick up more slots when I start to make more gold.

I started to put back all the mats, BOAs, etc in the bank and newly formed guild bank. We were putting things on the AH and moving items between toons. She started to feel like Doubloon.

Then as soon as I moved over my old bank alt gear to her and equipped them. She transformed back in to Doubloon. My bank alt is back. Same skin, different name and a higher level. The benefits out weighed the costs. You now have a better bank alt.

The Bank Alt

Professsions

She will cook for you, fish for you, store your goods, organize your bank for you, run to the store for you, etc. Just like a good house wife. She already comes equipped ready to bandage you with First Aid at level 270 and unlocked recipes.

You can still put Enchanting and Engineering on her. She will have access to higher profession levels which is especially useful for disenchanting low level mats.

Gear

She will wear the finest outfits up to level 60 or greater which equates to more looks. She can still equip the Diamond-Tipped Cane. She also has access to pink hair if you are a Night Elf. My brother recommends leveling your bank alt to level 70 so you can have access to more variation of looks with the gear from Outland.

Travel

She will have a mini sprint called Death’s Advance. She will also get free ground riding from being a Death Knight. The Death Gate to Ebon Hold will get you around Azeroth. She will have access to a bunch of flight points for access to those secret vendors that sell you those recipes and other items for profit. She will even ride your flying mount because just one more level and she’ll have flight.

If you level the bank alt higher you will get access to unique but useful traveling abilities.

Level 58Death’s Advocate – A mini sprint which increases your passive run speed by 10% and when activated will increase your run speed by 30%.

Level 66Path of Frost – An ability which will allow you and your raid members to walk on water. This ability is so useful my brother actually won the Stranglethorn fishing tournament on a level 70 Death Knight. He did get a lot of unpleasant whispers that day.

This reminds me of all those times you go into Ulduar for the mount run. You beat Flame Leviathan, kill Ignis, skip Razorscale, and then go for XT. As you are DPSing XT, you accidently switch targets and aim for his Heart. The Heart is destroyed and you trigger hard mode.

Life without WoW Insider, would be like playing Warcraft without a heart. You will be playing on Hard Mode.

I can’t imagine playing this game without WoW Insider. It’s been a part of my gaming experience since I started playing, back in 2007.

Where am I going to find cool stuff to farm?

Who is going to post very creative screen shots?

Where am I going to find a Q&A like the Queue?

Who is going to provide all the highlights from Blizzcon or the beta build?

Who is going to teach me how to increase my DPS or not stand in fire?

Life without WoW Insider will be playing Warcraft on hard mode. Our Warcraft community will be playing without our heart.

If you haven’t heard Lae at World of Lae is starting weeks of class discussion across the blogosphere, twittersphere, etc.

This Deathknight is the first Deathknight I ever got past level 70.

I got her to level 67 by the end of Cata. Then I dusted her off a few months ago and really started to level.

Why did I pick the professions?

I originally wanted to make her a BS/JC to min/max during Cata. I ended up leveling a Rogue first in Mop and putting ENG/BS on that toon. I figured pairing JC with mining because I was going to need ores to level JC. It feels natural to have a toon that can do both Prospecting and Smelting. It also seems weird not having those next to each other on my crafting bar.

I went JC for them mounts. I am trying get 200 mounts achievement. That’s one of the things I like to do in this game.

Quickness – Now gives you a 2% increased chance to Dodge. I still thought it only gave 1%. I forgot it changed during MoP.

Shadowmeld – It’s like having a Hunter’s Feign Death. You wipe aggro but you turn invisible. Especially usually for a tank during a situation when you know everyone else is going to die. Especially if the healer is already down.

Wisp Spirit – Increases your speed by 75% while dead. As tank it would be so helpful for running back. If you die in certain places like Icecrown you can fly as a wisp. So awesome.

DKs walk on water with Path of Frost and this toon will be a fisherman. The ability may also help you win the fishing contest.

I always wanted Platekini transmog sets.

I wish the lore would continue. Its like everything stopped in Northend. What are the Knights of the Ebon Blade doing right now? I could imagine them having epics battles in Icecrown against the remaining Scourge. They must really be trying for the Super Simian Sphere. They must have a bank alts bank filled with Frostweave Cloth.

Well here are some secret mystical items that will get your mage up to par with Jaina herself.

During the Cataclysm my world shattered when I created my mage with a Scroll of Resurrection. I did it so I could play with my Horde playing coworkers from my old job. I have recently discovered some of these mystical items and figured I should share these secrets thru my blog.

Here is the list:

Polymorphs

Turtle – Fished from the fishing pools in the Cataclysm Zones. It’s BOE so you buy it off the AH if you are lazy or already have the Sea Turtle mount. Prices vary by abundance.

Pig – The Amazing Zanzo a rare NPC who travels around Dalaran can teach you this spell. Now just where did he go?

Rabbit – During Noblegarden you can purchase this tome from the chocolate vendors for 100 Noblegarden Chocolate. “That’s candy gone to waste,” says Guntitan. That’s coming from the guy who sleeps with his pets in a crowded stable.

Black Cat – You would think somewhere somehow this would come from the Hallow’s End world event. It doesn’t. You can buy it from Endora Moorehead in Dalaran. Her shop is called Sisters Sorcerous.

Teleports and Portals

Ancient Tome of Teleport – Dalaran – This ports you to the old location of Dalaran in Hillsbrad. You want it? What are you waiting for? Head to Scarlet Halls. What you can’t solo that on heroic? Run back out and set it to normal. Now go one shot everything. Kill the last boss, loot everything off the boss, yes his Underwear too, then loot the tome off the bookshelf on the right side of the room. Keep in mind that the Teleport is only learnable at level 90. After you learn the spell you will then be able to purchase Ancient Tome of Portal – Dalaran from Endora Moorehead in Dalaran. Yes a Portal to the same location in Hillsbrad. Now go trick some noobs after they tip you and accidentally enter the wrong portal.

Did you ever notice some websites when added to your Home screen on your iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, or Android device; that the bookmark appears as a Icon instead of some generic thumbnail of your website or that annoying red bookmark icon for Andriod?

Well here is how you create one:

Make a .PNG file that is 57 x 57 pixels. Save it as a “apple-touch-icon.png” and a “apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png.” Yes 2 files of the same thing. I used my original file that I used for my favicon.ico.

Upload both of them to your root directory. It is usually “public_html” or “www” folder.

Add the following code to your Header code or header.php on your WordPress template file:

Don’t forget to change the URL. The experience of making my favicon.ico file made this seem easy. I encountered no difficulties making my .png files. When I put my files in my root directory my WordPress website did not load my .png icons when I created my bookmarks. I had to put the exact url with the <link rel…> code. Well to my fellow bloggers I hope this helped.

Okay that was a task. In a vain attempt last night and using Gimp, I tried to create my own icon file that was 16 by 16 pixels for the blog. If you don’t know what I am talking about, look at the icon next to the website URL up on the address bar. For whatever reason, it kept saving it as 16 x 15 pixels or 15 x 14 pixels, whenever I would convert to a .ico file. Frustrated I went to bed, even rejecting my buddy, Bodie, to PVP on my fairly new Goblin mage.

Today on my way to work, I did a little more research and found some websites. I discovered this awesome video…

When I got home from work, my brother wanted to run Sethekk Halls and Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle for some mounts. During my half hearted run, I made my new logo at 64 x 64 pixels. Then saved it as a .gif so that when re-opened in Gimp the image would stay its own layer.

When we finished our mount runs, I copied my initial layer and scaled the layer to the following sizes: 32 x 32 pixels, 24 x 24 pixels, and 16 x 16 pixels; using the 64 x 64 pixel layer to copy each time. Saved the file as a .ico. Logged in to my hosting account, uploaded my new icon, and pointed my browser to http://www.drunkendwarf.net/favicon.ico. It worked but still wasn’t showing up on my address bar.

Then I remembered about the header and seeing a tidbit of code that points your web browser to the right .ico file:

I guess for some servers and browsers, it isn’t enough for you just to place your .ico in the right directory.

Finally it worked. You may be asking why talk about some website technical difficulty?

It’s a lesson on perseverance. If I gave up on the endeavor, my website would still be without a favicon.ico, and I would still lack the knowledge of the full capabilities of Gimp. I would be still be sitting on my thumbs and left wondering if it was me or just the computer.

I overcame a challenge and completed a task I never did before. I want you to think about how this relates to your real life situations and World of Warcraft. For instance, playing my mage as Fire never netted me any results. My DPS sucked and I wasn’t sure if it was my lack of enchants, my understanding of the rotation, or my gear. A few people told me to try Arcane.

Today before work. I switched my Fire spec to Arcane, changed my glyphs, and queued for Raid Finder. The results were astounding, well more so after I read and re-read the rotation, yes a 2 year old could do it. Even if it is just a 2 button spam, it isn’t going to stop me from playing the spec. I did more DPS than I ever seen before on this toon. I finally felt like I am contributing and I hope to see more results the more I play.

If I just settled for Fire and never tried Arcane, my DPS would still be low, I would have been left wondering if my gear sucked or my enchants were still lacking or that I need to reforge. It’s like me using Gimp. If I didn’t commit the time to do research, my .ico file would still be broken.

With perseverance comes rewards, whether it be school, work, play, money, chicks, babies, or website building skills or World of Warcraft.

Transmog or Transmogrification is something new to the World of Warcraft and a part of Patch 4.3. When it was first announced, my first thought was, “Well… that’s useless.”

The new feature was first announced back in August and a little after you would see in trade chat “/2 LFG BWL for transmog run” or “/2 LFG BT transmog run.” Everyone and their sons were doing old raid content from vanilla to BC and beyond. It was amazing! Trade was alive again. People and their toons had a reason to do old raids.

Trade is still alive with people putting together old raids. After Patch 4.3 went live, everyone and their mothers were honing some oldie but goodie gears. People were unique in the game, people were putting together matching sets, and they just look amazing. I never thought a feature that was so useless to me would actually make the game richer.

No one inspired me more than my guild leader. We decided to do a Firelands pug after the patch went live and she went in wearing a truly unique matching set. It looked so good. I was impressed. Someone that I knew actually used this feature and it works.

Well there you go. You can now enjoy killing old raid bosses for fun and obtain really old entirely useless gear except to use as a transmog item, create an entirely new outfit, and look amazing. Especially now with Patch 4.3.2 you can enjoy doing these raids with some IRL friends that you have on real ID that you never play with because you are on different servers. Good job Blizzard. This is why World of Warcraft is the top MMO in the industry. They keep just sucking you back in to the game.

Why?: Because there are so many classes that got buffed up the kester when Cata came out.

Many people will not agree with what Blizzard did because it was there class that got nerfed. What they do not realize is that they are a minority! The entire WoW community has been screaming for these changes. Here are the finalized patch 4.0.6 notes.

Hunters

Aimed Shot weapon damage has been increased to 200%, up from 150%. In addition, the base cast time has been reduced to 2.4 seconds, down from 3.

Arcane Shot damage has been increased by 15%.

Aspect of the Wild, Aspect of the Hawk, and Aspect of the Fox can now be cast while mounted.

Hunters can now use Auto Shot while moving.

Casting Trap Launcher, Distracting Shot, and Scare Beast now cancel Auto Shot when cast. This is to make it easier to crowd control creatures with Auto Shot while moving enabled.

Concussive Shot duration has been increased to 6 seconds, up from 4.

Deterrence now provides 100% chance for melee attacks to miss instead of 100% parry chance. This means that attacks that cannot be parried, notably some rogue abilities, can now be prevented by Deterrence, and the hunter will gain the benefit of Deterrence even if disarmed.

Dust Cloud’s cooldown and duration have been modified to make it closer aligned with Tailspin (same effect, different pet).

Freezing Trap now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.

Kill Command’s damage has been increased by 20%.

Kill Shot’s attack power scaling has been increased by 50%.

Master’s Call now has a 35-second cooldown, down from 1 minute, and its range has been increased to 40 yards, up from 25. In addition, the visual effect is more obvious.

Wing Clip now has a PvP duration of 8 seconds.

Talent Specializations

Beast Mastery

Animal Handler now provides a passive 25% bonus to attack power, up from 15%.

Marksmanship

Chimera Shot’s overall damage has been increased by roughly 50%.

Wild Quiver (Mastery): Chance for this to trigger per mastery has been increased by approximately 17%.

Survival

Black Arrow damage has been reduced by 15%.

Explosive Shot damage has been reduced by 15%.

Hunter vs. Wild has been increased to 5/10/15% Stamina, up from 4/8/12%.

Into the Wilderness (passive) has been reduced to a 10% Agility increase, down from 15%.

Pets

Pets now have 70% of the master’s armor, rather than a different value based on which type of pet they are.

Shale Spiders now correctly have a special ability (Web Wrap).

Bad Manner (monkey) now properly breaks from damage.

Glyphs

Glyph of Concussive Shot redesigned. It now limits the maximum run speed of the target while Concussive Shot is active.

Hunter Bug Fixes

Aimed Shot no longer ignores the Fire! buff when cast by macro.

Camouflage is now breaking when the hunter’s traps deal damage to a target.